White Feather, Black Heart
by cilliastrange
Summary: Four years ago, guided by a mysterious stranger, five young experiments - Prim, Crow, King, Rhee and Mary - escaped the strange facility where they were created and tortured, leaving their sister, Yves, behind. Each has struggled to forge some kind of normal life. But skeletons don't stay in the closet, nightmares don't cling to the night, and monsters rarely stay under the bed...
1. Prologue

_There were six of us in Eden. Five of us escaped._

_And the other one?_

_We don't talk about her._

* * *

The three girls may as well have been automatons, with iron joints and cogs concealed within their skulls, for all the emotion that their faces betrayed. If he had not known precisely what they were, he thought, it might have been easy to mistake them for ordinary teenage girls on the cusp of adolescence, clad as they were in identical tartan skirts and neat blazers, their knee-high socks utterly snow-white without a single trace of grime. They wore their hair uniformly bound back into neat braids, without any of the unique deviation which might have characterised a normal trio of girls with normal lives in a normal world - no ribbons in their hair, no jewelry, no motifs tattooed with sharpie on their white shoes. They sat at their desks, their backs straight, staring straight ahead. Silas was not entirely sure they had blinked since he had first glimpsed them.

"They have never known any other life." The doctor's voice was quietly admiring. Her hands were clasped behind her back; the sheen of silver light on the surface of her spectacles obscured whatever emotions had infiltrated her eyes, but the curl to her lips made her amusement and satisfaction apparent to the slightest glance. Smugness radiated from her every pore. "Here, they are cared for." She gestured to the one-way mirror through which the small group were watching the unmoving girls, a note of affection colouring her words. "They are never hungry, never cold, never afraid. It is a kind of new Eden, is it not?"

"Do you forget what happened to the last Eden?" Silas replied softly, and earned a scowl from the good doctor in response. Doctor Faulkner was not an aged woman; Silas guessed that she was close to his own age, nearer to her twenties than to her forties, with a softness to the curve of her generous lips that belied the razor-sharp mind which lurked behind her shiny glasses. Unlike her colleagues at the School facility, Doctor Faulkner eschewed the typical whitecoat ensemble in favour of a lacy blouse and pencil skirt which rather gave her the appearance of a stern school mistress or librarian, her air of authority accentuated by the black heels which brought her to a height that eclipsed that of Silas or even the strong, stout Colonel Katona, whose pale gaze had not left the girls since he had laid eyes upon them.

"And the test results?"Colonel Katona's voice was low and steady; he had a singular kind of focus that suggested he might find Eden as eerie as Silas did, and had no intention of remaining here longer than he had to. He wasn't sure what he had expected to find here, Silas thought wryly, but it certainly hadn't been this: an immense stately home with wide green lawns and intricate wrought-iron gates closing it off from the rest of the world. Strange enough on its own, Silas mused, made all the stranger by the fact that the estate was marooned in a vast desert wasteland, the only spot of green to be glimpsed for miles around. The Eden comparison became more and more suitable the longer the more Silas saw of the odd facility.

Doctor Faulkner's lips curled into a smile as she picked up a folder and showed its contents to the colonel. Silas found himself drifting closer to the glass, like proximity might help him to glean something new from the strange, still tableau before him, like it might stir some humanity in the staring, silent girls sitting in the next room. A little closer, and he could see that their artificial perfection was not entirely blemished - the girl on the left had a bruise under one eye, the girl in the middle bore surgical scars running from her knee up her thigh to disappear under her skirt, and the girl on the right had bandages around the top of her fingers, wrapped just around the tips. Silas wondered if she had torn out her fingernails clawing at the walls at night.

He had done worse when he was in their place.

"This is very promising," Colonel Katona was saying softly. "I won't deny that I had my doubts about the new approach but..."He was turning a page and knitting his eyebrows as he read the file. "And the boys?"

On the other side of the room was a second mirror, looking into an identical classroom to the one in which the three girls sat, and indeed the room was a mirror of the first, right down to the emotionless faces of the three boys who sat there, clad in dark blue blazers and trousers like they were attending an old-fashioned boarding school. Like the girls, they could not have been much older than fourteen or fifteen, and like the girls, they bore some faint traces of the savagery which had been visited upon them, just enough to break the strange facade of perfection which had permeated all other aspects of this strange estate.

"Very much the same," Doctor Faulkner continued eagerly. "I must say, these results have exceeded even my wildest dreams. You can see why I would like to expand further - if we can accomplish this with only six subjects..."

Colonel Katona nodded firmly. "We can start redirecting resources from the School if the brass approves. Let's hope you can replicate it. Monroe?"

Silas glanced over at his colleagues and nodded. He wasn't sure how effusive they were expecting him to be; as the Itex representative, he was obviously, startlingly, out of place in this strange sterile mansion, too tethered to the modern world to fit into this odd vision of cloistered perfect serenity. "It's certainly... something."

Doctor Faulkner flashed him a tight, unamused smile. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it certainly is."

Over her shoulder, Silas saw that one of the girls had begun to bleed from her nose. She did not react, she did not move, she did not even blink, even as the blood drip drip dripped down.

* * *

**Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! This is my first story, so please let me know what you think of it. This story will follow five mutants with wings created by Itex, who were raised in Eden, a strange mansion locked away from the rest of the world in which they were trained and experimented on. It's more "boarding school from hell" than it is the animal crates and casual cruelty of the School. These five mutants escaped four years ago with the help of Silas Monroe, a mutant who had infiltrated Itex to help others escape its grips. However, one of their "siblings" was caught during the escape, and the five escapees were then separated during the escape and ended up scattered around the world.**

**Please leave a review and let me know what you think of the prologue!**


	2. I: in lines, lavish and dark

**A.N: Thank you to everyone who created a character for this story, and thank you so much to Pixelfun20 for leaving a lovely review of the prologue! I hope you enjoy the first chapter which follows and introduces our first central character. Please let me know what you think in a review. I have tried to include a short mention of each accepted character so far, but they will each get their own introductory chapter and viewpoint as the story begins to take shape. There are still two slots open for characters, so please don't hesitate to submit yours!**

* * *

_I would shun the light_  
_Share in evening's cool and quiet_  
_Who would trade that hum of night_  
_For sunlight, sunlight, sunlight_  
_Whose heart would not take flight?_  
_Betray the moon as acolyte_  
_On first and fierce affirming sight_  
_Of sunlight, sunlight, sunlight_

_I had been lost to you, sunlight_  
_And flew like a moth to you, sunlight_

* * *

Like Orpheus he had led them from the Underworld and into the light, and like Orpheus he had warned them not to look back as they ran.

Yves hadn't listened.

Danny kept waiting for that fact to alleviate the grief and guilt that still stirred her heart late at night, when the stars had risen and night descended, when she had no company but her own cruel thoughts and the memory of what had been and what could be once more, tangled amongst her veins and her nerves like something terrible and tenable. She kept waiting for that little fact to make a difference. Yves hadn't listened. Silas had warned them. Silas, their own personal Orpheus, had taken them by the hand and urged them to run, run like the devil himself was at your heels, run until your lungs burned and your heart felt like it would burst, run run run and don't look back.

Yves had looked back.

They hadn't even given her a chance to regret it.

Somehow, knowing that Yves had sealed her fate by looking back didn't make it any easier for the girl who had once been Mary to sleep - especially not on the bad days, when the nightmares suffocated her and the memories choked her and she could almost believe that the past four years had been some frenzied delusion from within the gilded cage of the mansion. On nights like these, she found she had two choices: she could lie, still and sleepless, in the cramped, cozy room that had once been intended for some small perfect human child which had never arrived, or she could slip downstairs, silent and subtle, past the master bedroom and down the narrow stairs and across the cold tiles of the kitchen, out through the Dutch doors which overlooked the back paddock where they kept the last of the nursing ewes.

She so rarely flew anymore - for such a long time, her only memory of true, unpinioned flight had been tainted with the panic of escape, scarred with the trauma of watching her siblings vanish into the ribbons of ether strewn across the horizon. The pain had not been merely emotional - the adrenaline of the open sky and the pursuit of mansion security behind her had masked for a long time the agony of whatever damage had been done to her right wing. Some sort of dart had torn through her veins and nerves, Danny thought, with a tracker embedded within, as though the mansion was determined to leave some sort of mark upon her - if they could not keep her trapped within its narrow perimeter, then it would ensure she could not flee far without retribution.

The man she now knew to be the kindest person on the face of the planet had been the one to remove it for her, sweet, kind Robert, and she had spent the following three weeks in a state of persistent petrification that it might have been too late - that they might have somehow locked on to her position, that they might arrive at any moment to raze the farm to ash, and slaughter Robert and Lucas and William, and drag Danny back to the mansion in chains. But those three weeks had passed, and life had gone on, and eventually Danny had roused enough courage to again venture beyond the narrow confines of her room and participate in the world once more, torn between hoping that she was truly hidden from the clutches of Doctor Faulkner and deciding that hiding from the world when she had gone through so much in order to step out into it.

And right now, the world seemed to unfurl before her like a picturebook, for a single instant utterly infinite. Surely there could be no more beautiful place in the world, Danny thought - for even in the dark, her acute senses could perceive the deep emerald of the sloping hills, the rich lavender heather and bright yellow gorse which carpeted the precipices and the cliffs, the velvety darkness of the night sky filleted by tiny pinpricks of perfect aureate light. In the moment of escape, that first taste of pure freedom, she did not think that she had consciously chosen her destination... and yet, Danny thought, gazing across the farmland and the wilderness beyond, if, in that moment she had emerged from the hell of the mansion, she had known anything of the world, she thought that she would have chosen this place. There were no walls here, no limits, no labs and no experiments, only grass and sky.

Yves would never see this, Danny thought. Her older sister had looked back. The others had escaped, and scattered - Danny could still remember seeing the eldest of the six, Prim, silhouetted against the sun like an ambitious Icarus, her long hair in wild tendrils about her head like some sort of demented halo. Prim had not looked back, but spread her wings and caught a thermal and rocketed upwards into the white light of the dawn, her yellow tartan skirt obscured by the glare of the rising sun. Crow had not looked back either, but set his wings and dived low to skirt the sand dunes which surrounded the fertile oasis of the mansion, his dark wings churning up tiny devilish tornados of dust in his wake, moving quick with the kind of certainty that only the dark-haired boy could conjure. And Danny had not looked back either, but had run just as Silas had instructed, and then launched herself bodily into the air with the desperation of one who has realised that if she cannot taste the sky then she would rather die trying.

_Don't look back, don't look back, don't look back._

Yves had looked back, and Danny had tasted the sky, just as Silas had promised.

And tonight, she could not hold herself back from doing so again.

Two steps forward and her wings burst out to either side and she was up, up and rising. Glossy, smooth and black, they caught the wind effortlessly and lifted her even further, totally untethered to the surface of the earth, utterly without ties if she chose to be without them. The toe of her boot brushed a tall strand of grass; she could hear, more than see, the movement of sheep among the long rushes in the back paddock, the soft breathing of the new lambs, tiny innocent creatures, all delicate and long-limbed. Danny couldn't say she didn't notice a resemblance with the creature she had once been.

Higher, then?

She rose. The stars were achievable for one such as her - indeed, she and her siblings were perhaps the only ones in the world who could possibly hope to reach for the stars, the moon, the very edge of the skies. And reach she did. Above, silver light: the moon waxing full and rich and starlight splattered across the cliffs like so much spilled wine. Below, golden light: the aura of rich honey coloured radiance pouring through the windows of the farmhouse where Robert had forgotten to switch off his bedside lamp before falling asleep, as he always did.

Higher again. The wind rustled through her bobbed hair, ruffling the short strands into a sort of dark crown. Danny sometimes wondered how far she could go if she dared to try - if she went far rather than high, if she ran, ran, ran like Silas had told them to all those years ago. How long would it take her to find a sibling? A day, a week, a month... years? She always hoped they were hidden well enough that she would never find them, even if she had tried to search. That Prim had gone to ground and used her abilities to stay one step ahead of their hunters, never needing to look over her shoulder like Danny did. That Crow was out there somewhere, studying and working hard, a normal life softening all his rough edges. And the others...

Danny didn't know what it was about this night, of all nights, that was tearing open so many old wounds. By rights, she had a new family: Robert, who had taken her in and dressed her in his dead wife's clothes and cared for her like Danny had always dreamed of a father caring for his daughter, and Lucas, who was a brother to her in the way that the other winged boys never could have been, all indulgent and rambling, and William, who would never introduce her to his husband or daughter but who tutored her in his spare time and had guided her through those first most awful days in the real world and had given Robert that first and most invaluable piece of advice: "_you can't call her hey you forever_".

She was Danny, and she belonged to them, or at least she should have. But there was a part of her that would always belong to the others, no matter where in the world they had found themselves, even if they were dead, even if they had made the mistake of looking back just as Yves had and been dragged back into the Underworld, without an Orpheus to save them this time. A part of Danny was inextricably tied to them still, like a little red ribbon which bound them together, no matter how far from one another they strayed.

No, she thought, not Danny - _Mary_.

Well, she had left Mary behind, killed her and buried her and abandoned her just as she abandoned the earth now, rising higher and higher, her flannel shirt whipping about her lean forearms as the air grew colder and thinner and her boots grew level with the top of trees rather than grass. Wherever her siblings were, she thought as she gazed out across the highlands, her hazel eyes alight with the quiet delight of this secret home she had forged for herself in the depths of nowhere, wherever they were they were gazing at the same sky and the same stars, and maybe they were thinking of her too.

* * *

**The Flock:**

**Girl 1: **Prim, created by Pixelfun20

**Boy 1: **Crow, created by gamergirl101

**Girl 2: **Yves, created by arrosaarmiarma

**Boy 2:**

**Girl 3: **Mary, created by chiaki ebooks

**Boy 3:**

* * *

**Other key characters: **Silas Monroe, Mira Argento (created by ShadowWolf223), Rosalia Conti (created by POMForever)


	3. II: lately of my wasteland

**A.N: I would like to apologise before this chapter begins: it involves the use of some different languages, some of which I speak and some which I do not, so I regret any mistakes you might notice! Where the point of view character understands the language, I include any translation for words or phrases used immediately after their use in italics. Where they do not understand, I have left them untranslated.**

**You may notice that the narrative style is a little bit different, as I am trying to differentiate the various characters and their mindset. I hope you still find it enjoyable!**

**Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, it means the world to me. I would love to hear about what you thought of this chapter. **

**The SYOC is now closed! I have received so many amazing submissions, so I would like to thank you all and can't wait to introduce you to the flock. If your character is instead a "key" character, their role will be almost equal to that of the flock members (or indeed perhaps larger than some!).**

* * *

_You lay in a field of flowers counting each bird that passes overhead. _  
_You've erased concern - for you always would say, "we might be dead by tomorrow."_  
_Flowers grew from your heart and bloomed across your lungs,_  
_creating a garden that sang the most beautiful hymns__._

_Every night you would view the stars and moon with pure amazement  
__As if it was your first time seeing them._  
_You gave all your love to me and each kiss was coined in my pocket._  
_You fell in love with me every night and I fell for all your hymns._

_But lately, my love, I've been falling for stars._  
_Imagining what it'd be like slow dancing with the planets, getting lost in constellations._  
_Somewhere lost in the cosmos,_  
_Dreaming about what it would feel like to walk on flowers again._

* * *

It had taken three months for Alfred to realise that he had never seen his wife look into a mirror. More than that - she appeared to utterly abhor her own reflection. She consciously averted her eyes as she passed reflective surfaces, turned her back on illuminated windows when the night was dark, even disdained the use of silver-leaf cutlery in favour of wooden chopsticks when the family dined together in the evenings. She had covered the mirror in their room, and in Jason's room as well, saying something about light and cold, and treated him as her reflection, asking him if she looked alright or if she had something in her teeth, relying on him to act as her mirror and reflect reality truthfully back to her.

Alfred was more than happy to do so. What a tiny act of love it seemed, and of course he quietly delighted in telling her precisely how lovely she looked whenever she thought to ask him. "Tall, dark and handsome," he had said that morning as she pulled on her pale blue shirt, her long dark braid swinging like a pendulum back and forth across her narrow shoulders. Ruan was tall and slim and gorgeous, but half of her beauty came from the quiet aura of calm and confidence that she exuded quite effortlessly from every pore, like it was something tenable, physical, bodily. She positively bled strong will and stubbornness, even in those moments that she was clearly at some sort of disadvantage - tutoring her in taekwondo when they had first met had somehow managed to make Alfred feel like the novice. It was a strange quality to adjust to -

\- and yet it seemed quite natural, after all these years, to sit at the table and cradle their baby in his arms, and watch Ruan flit about the kitchen, preparing for her day, her strength and composure like a veil settled upon her shoulders, apparent to anyone who cared to look. Jason was still half-asleep in Alfred's arms, making the kind of soft, sweet sounds that every parent delights in, moving gently to press his little face into Alfred's shirt as though to smother his own dreams. Shufen trailed Ruan about the kitchen as she arranged her breakfast, the German Shepherd seeming quite content to merely dog his mistress's heels and be paid no attention whatsoever as she performed her usual morning ablutions.

"I'll try to make it back for lunch," she was promising Alfred, her voice still tinged with that strange not-quite-accent which had so strongly characterised her speech when they had first met, like she had learned to speak English from old films and wartime ballads, rhythmic and broad. "Have a wonderful day, _xīngān_." She reached over the table to press a gentle kiss to Alfred's forehead, her lips cool despite the burgeoning heat of the early Australian day, which had already permeated the wide bay windows which overlooked their view of the suburbs and the azure water in the port. "You'll keep an eye on him, won't you, Jason?"

Jason gurgled his agreement quite happily.

"Work hard and stay safe," was Alfred's reply, as it always was. "I love you."

"So you say," was Ruan's wry reply, as she pulled on her police vest and patted Shenfu goodbye. "So you say."Alfred prided himself in being able to read people like an open book, but even after all these years she still managed to surprise him sometimes - even if only with her stubborn refusal to accept his obvious adoration without some kind of self-deprecation.

"_Xīngān_. My heart and liver," she had called him, the day that he had asked her to marry him. "I wouldn't deserve you in any world."

Well, he knew better than to argue with her sometimes.

She shut the door behind her and the house fell silent for a moment, Shenfu settling down onto his haunches by the window with an expectant look that suggested he did not intend to leave his position until Ruan returned at lunchtime, as she had promised to do. Jason stirred in Alfred's arms, took in a deep inhalation as though testing the full capacity of his lungs - and began to cry, his tiny perfect hands clenching into a tiny perfect fist around bunches of Alfred's shirt, his eyes narrowing into distressed slits, his entire body heaving with the effort of his performative distress.

"Alright," Alfred whispered softly. "Alright, okay, don't worry. What is it this time around, Jason?"

Even after four months, it still felt strange putting a name to the tiny creature in his arms who had been a mere thought, an imagined perfect child, for so very long. Trying to give him a name had been such a challenge. Ruan had flinched when he had suggested Belinda or Eve for a girl, and had looked like she was about to cry when he had hastily tried to recover by offering the name Mary instead, after his own mother - one of the first and only times Alfred had seen her really and truly allowing an unguarded glimpse at the vulnerability of whatever trauma lay beneath. She had recovered masterfully ("so _old-fashioned_," she had murmured lightly, grazing calloused fingertips across his jawline, where he had not shaved in two days. "I think he or she deserves something a little more modern, don't you?") but it had just been another reminder that he could never truly know or understand the past she had buried when she had met and married him. Ruan spoke about her childhood only when she wanted to - Alfred never pushed her for anything she didn't want to reveal - but he knew enough. He knew enough.

("More modern?" Alfred had said, and Ruan had shrugged and smiled sweetly: "I'm done living in the past, _xīngān_.")

More modern, he thought with a wry smile now, and they had called him Jason, he of the Argonauts. Alfred couldn't argue with the choice - the first moment he had laid eyes on the little one, he had known that yes, this was a Jason if ever there had been one, unquestionably Jason-like, unflinching in his Jason-ness.

And, right now, Jason was already quietening a little, his pale, downy wings fluttering very gently against Alfred's arms, as though still half-paralysed by the heavy weight of sleep. Ruan usually pinioned them painlessly when the family were in public, anything to avoid drawing undue attention to her beloved son, and each time Alfred could clearly perceive just how much it pained her to have to so restrict the child she was so determined to protect with every sinew and fibre of her being. Confining Jason in any way was so entirely abhorrent to every aspect of her new life, Alfred knew that she was often hesitant to even bring him out of the house when it would require so concealing his wings, and yet she was equally so determined to give him as normal and delightful a childhood as any baby could conceivably experience - trips to the zoo and picnics on the beach and walks in the park with Shenfu chasing butterflies.

Alfred moved from the table and headed back up the stairs to dress Jason, trailed at a healthy distance by Ruan's little tabby tomcat, Jingwei, who liked to pretend to disdain Jason when he thought that Ruan or Jason were watching, but who plainly doted on him in their absence, to the point that Alfred had given up closing Jason's door at night in an effort to hush the plaintive and cacophonic mewling that commenced around midnight every night when Jingwei discovered to his despair that access to Jason's cot had been denied to him. "How are we going to dress the little guy today, Jingjing?"

He knew what Ruan's preference would be - something floral and rustic, brightly coloured and individualist, something _Jason-y_. It was a kind of game for them on the weekends, when they were both around to plead their individual cases; he could almost hear exactly what Ruan would say if he had asked her opinion before she left for work: _"I don't care if he's a boy, Alfie! Every baby deserves to be cute!"_

Into Jason's room, and pulling cartoon onesies out of the drawer, Alfred became vaguely aware of the fact that Jingwei had begun to meow, a frantic, frenetic, kinetic element to the sound. He glanced over at the tiny little cat, who was pawing at the white sheet Ruan kept over the free-standing mirror in the corner. Alfred never knew exactly why Ruan had only covered the mirrors, rather than getting rid of them, but whenever he had suggested the latter she had only shrugged and said, quite softly, "we can't hide him from his own reflection forever."

Alfred knew better than to push too hard for what she meant by that.

He set Jason back down into his crib and went over to Jingwei to move him before he caused some sort of damage, but as he drew closer to the mirror, Alfred became aware of the softest whisper filling the room, quiet and sibillant.

"..._orewaomaeomitsuketa...orewaomaeomitsuketa...orewaomaeomitsuketa..._"

Jingwei's claw caught the corner of the sheet and pulled it from the mirror, unveiling the reflective surface. Alfred bent to pick up the cat... and became aware as he did so that, although he had stooped, his reflection had remained standing. He froze, and straightened, and looked at himself in the eye.

And his reflection turned its head and smiled with very sharp teeth.

"_Orewaomaeomitsuketa," _it said again.

In the crib, Jason began to cry again, loud and strident, like he could sense that something was wrong in the room. Alfred's reflection turned to look, as though to find the source of the sound, and Alfred instinctively moved to block his own gaze, to prevent whatever strange thing was inside the mirror from laying eyes upon his son.

The reflection met his gaze quite steadily.

"..._omaewaorenoanewaarimasen_…" Its voice was deep and distorted, as though speaking through a mouthful of wasps underwater, an ominous vibration of bass to its words. Alfred could not help but stare at his own face - and it was still entirely him, his deep brown eyes and his close-cropped hair and the scar over his lip where he had sustained an accident with a stapler as a young boy, all except for those sharp, sharp teeth - as his reflection swept its gaze across the room, first to the left and then to the right and then back to focus on Alfred himself. The words it spoke were strange and utterly foreign - he could not understand them, but the tone was transparently scornful. "..._donatadesuka_..."

It frowned, his own features contorting into the unfamiliar expression, and something seemed to writhe for a moment beneath the flesh, like whatever was speaking had crawled bodily into the bones of his reflection and was controlling it from within, movement obvious beneath the skin. His reflection cocked its head, the rustle of its clothing and the stir of its hair silent in the strange mirror world it inhabited as it looked Alfred straight in the eye, his own brown eyes, just staring, staring, staring, as his double spoke again, its voice warped and eerie: _"...whereisprim...whereisprim...__whereisprim..._"

Alfred hadn't realised that Ruan had entered the room until she was beside him, one hand on his shoulder as though to pull him back from the mirror, like she thought his reflection would reach out and try to pull him in. She had moved so silently, but now that she was beside him he could feel the frisson almost vibrating in her bones, the nervous energy that was surging through her sinews and arteries - and he saw that the expression in her eyes was unlike anything he had ever seen before. His wife was ordinarily such a collected, sweet person, and the intensely fearful anger and ugly, distorted hatred that flared in her gaze was utterly unrecognisable to him. Bizarrely, he could only think, _shouldn't you be at work?_

Ruan grabbed the mirror and flung it to the ground. It shattered instantly into a hundred tiny pieces of glass, a thousand pieces in which Alfred could still see movement... no longer his own face, but another person peering through the reflective surface like it was a window into another world, their face fractured across the dozens of mirror fragments, someone with a scar cutting through their upper lip and twisting it into an odd, ugly grimace, someone with icy blue eyes so pale they seemed white by the pupil, someone with long black hair and pale olive skin, like they had not seen the sun in many years. The person did not speak, the person did not move, the person did not seem capable of doing anything except watching, until Ruan's boot rose and fell and crushed the piece of glass nearest to her, the fragment showing a single staring blue eye. Then, a final whisper, an exhale from the smashed piece of mirror: "_...orewaomaeomitsuketa...orewaomaeomitsuketa...ifoundyou...ifoundyou..._"

All the other fragments flickered like a television set experiencing poor reception, black and white and gray again, and then fell dark and reflected only the ceiling of their bedroom and Alfred's own fearful eyes.

A single word remained, suspended in the air as though from the hangman's noose.

"..._prim_."

* * *

**The Flock:**

**Girl 1: **Prim, created by Pixelfun20

**Boy 1: **Crow, created by gamergirl101

**Girl 2: **Yves, created by arrosaarmiarma

**Boy 2: **King, created by AyOK

**Girl 3: **Mary, created by chiaki ebooks

**Boy 3: **Rhee, created by So hard to choose usernames

* * *

**Other key characters: **

Orion Winchester (created by blueburns)

Remiel (created by Deadly Animals Are Cute)

Mira Argento (created by ShadowWolf223)

Rosalia Conti (created by POMForever)


	4. III: reasons wretched and divine

**A.N: Sorry for the late update! I hope you enjoy this chapter. It's a bit of departure from the previous two.**** This is the chapter where things really get rolling - rather than pure reflections, we have a character willing to put matters into his own hands. We may even have some reunions in the next chapter!**

**As I know there may be some questions: most of this chapter takes place six months before Danny's and Ruan's. **

**Please let me know what you think in a review!**

* * *

_Why would you make out of words_  
_A cage for your own bird?_

_Let it hurl, let the awful song be heard_  
_Blue bird, I know your beat, baby_  
_But your secret is safe with me_  
_'Cause if secrets were like seeds..._

_There's no plan_  
_There's no race to be run_  
_The harder the pain, honey, the sweeter the song_  
_There's no plan_  
_There's no kingdom to come._

* * *

The water had no end, no horizon upon which land might encroach, somewhere far in the distance. Its surface was flat and dark and utterly still, unmoved by even the ghostly idea of a breeze, so motionless that he could almost believe that it was solid, that it would support his weight, that he could walk across its length to whatever lay beyond, that place where sky and sea became indistinguishable. When he looked down, he could see only a black mirror, displaying back his pale eyes and the uncertain expression on his face, and he looked away just as quickly again, unwilling to betray himself to the reflections that lurked within.

June knew the danger of drowning. You could drown in water - that was the easiest, he thought, almost instinctual, as simple as breathing - or you could drown in memories, in thoughts, in guilt that grew around your heart and your throat with thorns and choking vines. Drowning was as easy as falling, and the boy with wings knew that falling was the most elementary thing of all. "_Aves volare astra cadunt,_"Rhee would have said, if he was here, and for an instant June could pretend that his younger brother was standing at his shoulder with that familiar anxious humour etched around his eyes. "Birds fly, but stars fall."

Faulkner had always called them her little stars.

The sky was full of them tonight, if it was night, for there was neither sun nor moon to be spotted in the expanse of sky, which was neither entirely dark nor entirely light but a strange rich velvety violet through which pinpricks of light glowed, aureate and argent, illuminating the water in strange patchwork illumination. And the sky was impossibly full of stars - so many, clustered together, more than June had ever seen in the real sky, millions and billions, brighter and larger and spinning. Neither day nor night, just as June could sense that he was neither awake nor asleep, not truly, or if he was, then he could not yet tell if this was dream or nightmare, if it was omen or promise, if the stars were brighter than the water was dark.

He was at the edge of the water, and a wooden dock stretched in front of him, its slats slick with seaweed and the spray of saltwater from an utterly unmoving, crystalline sea. There was no sign of tide, no movement of fish beneath the surface, no waver of plants along the bed, and for an instant June could believe that he was the only alive thing in the world, a strange relic of not-quite-humanity, his the only breath and his the only heartbeat. And then he spotted the boy sitting on the dock.

The first time June had seen the boy, he had thought he was Rhee - there were certainly similarities there, for the two young men were of an alike height and build, and shared the same straight black hair. Certainly as he approached slowly, noting for the first time that his feet were bare, June could see more clearly that the similarities ended there; Rhee had warm brown skin and angular eyes and a tendency to smile briefly and broadly, an expression that would light up his entire face. This guy, June knew, had a freckled heart-shaped face and rounded features, sleepy grey eyes, a scar across his lip, fingers weighed down by gold and silver rings, dripping with them.

This was not the first time June had seen this dock.

This was not the first time June had seen that sky.

This was not the first time June had met this boy.

"_Rei_." The boy spoke without turning to look at him. His voice sounded as sleepy as his eyes usually looked, as though he was lost in his own strange dreamscape as surely as he had caught June in this one, slightly distracted, not entirely here and not entirely there. He had a slight accent that June thought might be some sort of Scandinavian - Norwegian, maybe, or Finnish, something lilting, something that sounded like crisp cool air and painted boats bobbing on gentle tides."_Obrigado por me conhecer_. Thank you for meeting me."

June said nothing. He had found this was usually the best way to deal with this stranger. The first time they had met, the other boy had not spoken to him at all, only gazed out at the horizon while the world warped and faded around them and June awoke again in the hollowed-out shell of the aircraft in which he spent his nights, sheltered from the dull sky by the waxy leaves of the rainforest, cradled in the branches of the trees, far from the danger of the ground and yet alway, always, always at risk of falling. He had feared it was an agent of Eden searching him out in his dreams, and had remained awake for the following eighty hours, desperate to avoid their trackers, if this was indeed their tracker, desperate to avoid sleep, desperate to avoid dreaming.

And a small part of him had said _let them find you_.

_At least then we'll be together again._

And yet no one had come for him, not yet, and so when he again slept and dreamed and encountered the boy, he had asked him questions - many questions, so many questions, _who are you_ and _where are my siblings_ and _is Mary alive_ and _what do you want from me_ \- and received no answers, as the boy only continued to gaze out at the water, almost as though June was as ghostly and invisible to him as one of Yves' shadows. And then again it had all faded and June had been left back to his own bed, without answers. Since then, he had dreamed of this boy... Perhaps six times in all.

This was more than he had ever said before.

"We don't have long." The boy's foot skimmed the surface of the water, sending gentle ripples across the slate-like surface of the sea, his voice reedy and wisping in the air like smoke exhaled from a cigarette, like at any moment the dream was about to fall apart at the seams and it was only the quiet strength of his heart holding it all - the water and the sky and the earth - together for whatever time they did have. "We don't have long at all."

June stepped forward again, drawing closer to the boy. He could see now that the stranger was even more waifish than he had believed at first glance - his clothes were layered, coat upon coat upon jumper upon jumper, although the half-night was neither cold nor warm but simply was. The stranger's rings glinted, gold and silver and bronze, in the light of the stars.

And still June said nothing. Why was the stranger speaking now?

"They are alive," the boy continued softly. "All of them. Brother and brother. Sister and sister and..."

June's heart seemed to catch in his throat. "And Mary?" he demanded. The words spilled for him, unbidden.

"Alive." The smile that quirked the scarred lips of the boy was crooked, lifting higher on the left side than on the right. "Not for long. Smoke..." He cocked his head, such a birdlike motion that June could almost believe that it belonged to Crow or Yves or one of the others. "So much smoke."

June's fingers curled. "Why should I believe you?"

The stranger's grey eyes were exceptionally pale. "You think this a trap? I know you, young Junio. I have seen much. I know about you and I know what you whispered to Belinda and I know about Mamá and all her powders. I know you sleep in the shell of an old aircraft and I know you took your name from a cheap calendar in a schoolhouse and I know what dirty, bloody work you have done to survive and I know what feelings lie in your heart, grief and guilt and shame and love in one. I know you, June. And I know your siblings are alive, one and all. If I wanted to hurt you, you would be in shackles in Eden already."

June set his jaw. "Why are you telling me this?"

The boy seemed to ignore his question, only turned back towards the water. "_Salve ait Silæ,_" he said softly. "We don't have much time. _You _don't have much time._"_

"_We? _Who is _we?" _June took another step forward, aware that the edges of the world had begun to ripple and waver as though with a heat mirage, despite the mild nature of the air around him. "Who are you?"

The boy smiled, and pointed up at the stars, and then was lost to the morning as June awoke, awoke and stared upwards.

There had been a time when he had promised himself that he would search the entire world to piece his family back together, like they were something precious and crystalline that had smashed and fragmented and he knew that there were still sharp shards out there, somewhere out there in the world, glinting in the light and waiting to be found. Time had not eroded that desire to find his siblings - it had only strengthened it, widened the strange void under his ribs that seemed to ache every time he saw a crow on a street lamp or had to turn away from a mirror or watched the rain fall as he and Mary had once down from within Eden - but time had made it easier for him to imagine what was and what could be. What if Prim were dead? What if Rhee had been dragged back to Eden in shackles? What if Crow had learned the truth about that fateful day, the day they had escaped? What if Mary...

So it was easy to wait. To delay. To spend his day in the dens of thieves and the backalleys of slums and retreat at night to the rainforest, to think about his family and the life they had shared in Eden, strange and painful and yet with one another to depend on, with one another to protect and to be protected by. June had always been something of Faulkner's favourite - he could admit that now, could admit it and hate himself a little for it - but even Faulkner's favourite had glimpsed hell in that place and been hauled back from the edge only by the steely solidarity of his siblings.

And his siblings were _alive._

So June awoke. The day was dawning bright and bloody. It was not even noon before he had found his way onto a small Twin Otter plane, carrying hyacinth macaws poached from the rainforest to a particular small park in Nyíregyháza, remembering what the stranger had said -

And he searched.

Six months passed.

* * *

**The Flock:**

**Girl 1: **Prim, created by Pixelfun20

**Boy 1: **Crow, created by gamergirl101

**Girl 2: **Yves, created by arrosaarmiarma

**Boy 2: **King, created by AyOK

**Girl 3: **Mary, created by chiaki ebooks

**Boy 3: **Rhee, created by So hard to choose usernames

* * *

**Other key characters:**

Orion Winchester (created by blueburns)

Remiel (created by Deadly Animals Are Cute)

Mira Argento (created by ShadowWolf223)

Rosalia Conti (created by POMForever)


	5. IV: but the farrow know

**A.N: I hope you enjoy this chapter, and the promised short reunion. This chapter retreads some old ground, but I hope it brings some new understanding and clarity to previous chapters!**

**I would like to note that I am so thrilled at the diversity of characters that have been submitted. I have done my best to write characters accurately to their position in life and their experiences - however, if you notice any mistakes, be it in language or cultural aspects, don't hesitate to let me know! I have striven to do as much research as possible but obviously I am no expert. **

**Next chapter, I'm hoping to draw in some larger aspects of the world and story, so expect an appearance from a certain someone in the prologue...**

**Please let me know what you think of this chapter, particularly Makoto, in a review!**

* * *

_枯野路に  
__影かさなりて  
__わかれけり_

_On the path in the desolate field,_  
_The shadows overlapped and_  
_Parted._

* * *

For four years, no one had bothered to ask Makoto whether he had family, what he did after class concluded, where precisely he lived. Oh, the boy was popular enough - he had the usual number of friends, the usual kinds of after-school hobbies, the usual sorts of shallow friendships that predominated when one was young and youthful and prepared at any instant to leave everything behind for what seemed like a brighter future. He maintained grades slightly better than average, a faultlessly polite sort of aloof stoicism, an accent that people in Tokyo thought was from Kyushu and people in Kansai thought was from Hiroshima. A normal boy, Makoto could imagine his neighbours and teachers saying if asked, a little quieter than the others but a nice, normal boy.

This wasn't normal. This was a pale imitation of normal - going through the motions, afraid at every moment of slipping up and betraying the truth, always looking over his shoulder to see the sky darken with the shadow of Eden... this wasn't life, but survival. Makoto knew better than to ever hope for true normality, but if this was all that they had to hope for, then what had been the point of escaping?

Call it a mid-youth crisis. High school had been its own little bubble for so long, with all the focus on tests and exams allowing Makoto to forget that the future - wide and uncertain and awful - was just around the corner.

The word _lurking_ came to mind.

The question of what came after... well, Makoto had always known it would have to be addressed, but the when had always been easy to push away. Every day had followed the last, without plan or strategy except to keep up the act, maintain the facade, ensure the mask was not permitted to fall. His first few long, desperate weeks and months in the real world, the free world, the wild world, had been something like a strange tornado of hunger and ecstasy and loneliness and instinctual cruelty, making his way through the streets, stealing from shops and from bins, taking jobs where he could find them - jobs which put money in his pocket and blood on his hands.

He could still remember that first time, seven days after he had last seen his siblings, five days after he had touched down in the city. Standing on the roof of the school and looking down at the students filing in, dressed similarly to how he and his siblings had been attired in Eden - neat skirts and blazers, impeccably ironed shirts, scuffed shoes with laces trailing. And yet, even in the quiet order of the classroom, Makoto could see some differences: the girls wore their hair with different ribbons and barrettes, rolled up their skirts according to their preferences, toted bags littered with brightly coloured stickers and pin badges. The boys wore their ties loosely, rolled their shirts to their elbows, carried raquets and footballs and kendo swords that differentiated the tiny individual worlds each one occupied. They were chatting and laughing, slinging arms around one another and calling out to their friends as they approached, kicking balls against the wall of the school in a game of their own devising and swinging their bags back and forth as their shoes click-click-clicked across the slate of the yard in response to the bell shrilling out across the open space.

Makoto had been fascinated. Totally, utterly, fascinated.

He hadn't been able to look away.

The exams and the homework, well, that had been something of an unpleasant surprise but Makoto had handled it in turn. Write an essay, stretch your wings, find an abandoned building in which to spend the night. It had been a simple, odd routine, he thought wryly, but there had been something soothing about being so constantly and consistently busy, without even enough time to worry about what shadows were at his back or what swords hung over his head. Staying at the same school all the time, well, that had been a risk, one that seemed to have paid off so far, but for the first three years sleeping in the same place had seemed an even greater danger.

It was inevitable that all the precautions would gradually slip, Makoto mused - no, not slip, he hadn't allowed it to slip. Each relaxation of usual protocol had been calculated and considered, from his choice of permanent name - MA-KO-TO, written 誠, each stroke a cautious, considered etching of sincerity, and then FOO-ZHEE-MO-TO, written first 藤 and then 本, arousing images of little purple petals and curling serpentine roots hidden beneath the ground - to his decision to take up a part-time job in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, working under-the-table and cash-in-hand, somewhere the manager called him Fujimoto-kun and the chefs all called him "that quiet bastard", all the way up to the day he had met Suzuki-san, the wizened landlady with the slightly grimy flat in a slightly seedy building in a bad part of Roppongi and handed her the equivalent of four hundred dollars for one month's rent.

He had waited for a month. Waited for the black van to pull up and disgorge whitecoats and Eden security into the streets. Watched the skies for his siblings to drop down from the sky, like corpses raining forth. And when a month had passed, and none of that had happened, Makoto had gone back to Suzuki-san and paid another four hundred dollars and settled a little more, quite cautiously, into this strange life. He had changed jobs after a _gaijin_ customer had looked at him a little too long and a little too intensely, just quit and walked away, and then changed jobs again after an incident at the nightclub where he had flung an enormous man harassing some girls onto his back in the street with barely a flick of his wrist. He knew it was only a matter of time before he had to move again - although he did like working at Sasayaki no Niwa, where tea and whiskey was served side-by-side, where the staff knew every customer by name and drink preference, whereif you could see the face of the person next to you there would be complaints that the lamps were turned up too bright, where Makoto could study as much as he liked as long as the tea was served hot and the pints were served promptly.

He would miss it, when he went to university. He would miss much about this strange, not-quite-nomadic life. He had graduated two days ago. The other students had looked down from the stage to see family beaming and clapping from folding chairs in front of the stage; Makoto had looked up at the sky instead, and thought of those he had lost to its maw. That evening, Suzuki-san had arrived at the door of his little studio flat with a cupcake, a candle, and a small bound book. "Well done, Fujimoto-kun," she had murmured darkly, put them into his hands, and returned downstairs to her radio and her knitting.

She was a dour, cynical sort - she and Makoto got along well enough for that reason. He couldn't say that they were close, but over the past year or so he had got to know her well, well enough that in the mornings he kept quiet on the stairs. Ordinarily he worked nights, but he was rarely one to keep a strict schedule or turn down an extra shift... money was money, after all. Makoto had his priorities straight.

Which was why he spotted it as soon as he opened the front door.

There was a black feather nailed to the door.

A sign. An omen. A warning?

Makoto shut the door behind him and retraced his steps as quietly as possible back up into his room, aware that - for the moment - the streets would not be his friend.

Could be nothing. Could it? He couldn't take that risk. Whatever it was, it was _something_.

He couldn't afford to think otherwise.

Back up the stairs. He had always known that packing light would pay off someday, that being able to cut and run swiftly would always be worth more than material objects. He kept his money in cash in a tobacco box under the bed and the book Suzuki-san had given him on the locker beside his bed. Easy enough to fit into two pockets, his focus turning towards the window of the room in turn, all of his senses and instincts moving inexorably towards that one important objective: _escape_. Escape again, escape for now, escape alive.

As he stepped forward, flexing his fingers and extending his hand towards the window, he caught sight of his own reflection in its reflective surface. His hair had grown long in the last few years, the scars of Eden healed slowly and unevenly across his face and throat.

He could not quite resist the little voice that came to mind as he saw himself in the mirrored image.

Manipulating glass was easy. Manipulating what it _showed_, on the other hand...

Ordinarily Makoto would need something physical, something tenable, a tether to the tableau he wished to tap into, something to tie him to whatever lay on the other side of the mirror. But _he_ was the tether to his siblings, bound to them by more than mere blood or bone, by something that went beyond that. He had searched for them often after their initial escape, every day and sometimes every night as well, until it had occurred to him that Eden was probably tracking him through the reflections just as he was trying to track his siblings, sensing when he used his abilities. Certainly the appearances from Eden forces had greatly decreased since he had stopped looking, had begun to forget.

But if someone already knew where he was...

How long did he have?

He paused, and sighed, almost resentful of the opportunity, but then did not hesitate as he set aside the escape for the briefest moment and instead went to the sink in the corner of the room to fill up a small bowl of water. He set it down on the desk and then collapsed warily into his chair, every fibre of his being whispering what a bad idea this was.

"Fujimoto-kun?"

Makoto looked up from the water, almost dazed at having been so disturbed from his focus. "What?"

The narrow silhouette of Suzuki-san was stretched wide and warped across the threshold o his room. "There's - there's someone asking for you."

So quickly? Makoto tensed immediately. "Who?"

"They didn't give their name. A white man. About your age."

Well, that narrowed it down marvelously.

Makoto nodded sharply. "I'll be out in a moment."

He watched as Suzuki-san left. As soon as the door had closed behind her, he extended his hand and allowed his index finger to sweep very gently along the surface of the water, making contact with his reflection, who did the same. His reflection shut its eyes, and Makoto watched as the surface of the water was transformed into a maelstrom of colour and images as his reflection flashed between a thousand reflective surfaces in a single instant, searching for anything that tied Makoto to the ones he had once called sister and brother.

Nothing.

_Keep going._

A world flashed by, or, at least, the mirrored reflection of one, warped in a way that only glass could - women too tall, men too short, children wan in the dark and the faded unclarity of screens, a million lives captured in another finite moment.

And still, nothing.

_Keep going._

Makoto narrowed his eyes and focused, an almost physical yearning to see a familiar face or set of wings. It was like a prayer - primkingmaryrhee, primkingmaryrhee, primkingmaryrhee...

Prim. King. Mary. Rhee.

Yves.

_There._

Softly, an almost ghostly voice, wafted from the surface of the water like so much steam: "..._h__aveawonderfulday__xīngān_..."

_Focus_.

The images continued to flicker past, but slower now, more specific, the same rooms shown from different perspectives as Makoto's reflection latched onto various reflective surfaces from which to play voyeur, so fast as to be dizzying to watch, all brilliant colours and bright sunshine and movement, four or five moving creatures in the same space.

_Focus._

The water rippled and then turned white, solid white, as though cloudy, as though something chalky had been dissolved within its depths. It had frozen on that image, Makoto thought, and then, with a sudden flash of realisation - the mirror had been covered up, some sort of white sheet. Well, Makoto thought wryly, his family had always been the paranoid sort.

And then the sheet fell, and again there was the usual flash of images as his reflection sought to focus on something, anything, that tethered _here_ to Makoto, that tied this room to his siblings, that justified this vision - and wavering, there it was, a photo, tucked into the corner of the room, on the dresser beside a baby's bottle: a Chinese couple, both tall and attractive and smiling, the man tall and lean, the woman clad in an immaculately white dress, her dark brown eyes slightly intense in their focus even diluted through the dual medium of photograph and reflection.

Well, Prim never had known the meaning of _relax._

"I found you," Makoto murmured, almost in awe. "_Ore wa omae o mitsuke-ta..._"

The rest of the image came into focus very slowly - a man standing in front of the mirror, a cat cradled in his arms like one might hold a baby, an expression of equal parts confusion and fear flitting through his eyes. He had dark brown eyes and black hair, and despite the obvious years and stress that had passed between then and now it was apparent to Makoto that this was the man from the photograph. Makoto paused. "You're not my sister," he said softly. "Who are you?" He switched to English. "Who are you?" He cocked his head and searched the background of the image, wondering if she was hidden in the background, her edges blurred and faded. "Where is Prim?"

The man opened his mouth to speak and then, as though in answer to her question, there was a waver and a flash and his sister's face for a single instant flickered across the surface of the water. Makoto hadn't known what to expect - for her to bear some of the same scars that he did, to show some of the same hunger and tightly wound fury that had so characterised their childhood, _something_ that would drive home the guilt of never having found her before, of neglecting to even look for the past few years - but she looked... was healthy the word? Was happy the word? Not now - there was an ugliness in her expression, a flare of hatred, but there were no shadows under her eyes, no lines of stress etched deeply in her face, a health to her form that Makoto had never seen before. She was almost unrecognisable as his older sister.

But she was, unmistakably... "_Prim_," Makoto shouted, and then the entire image went dark.

And downstairs, there was the similarly unmistakable sound of a door being kicked in.

In only a second, Makoto was over at the window. He looked out at the street outside, and confirmed that there was a black van parked on the side of the street; a Japanese woman and a white man were standing at its door, conferring quietly as the black-clad enforcers with them rushed into the Suzuki building. Whitecoats? A single touch from Makoto's finger, and the glass cracked, fragmented, and then shattered - its shards did not fall but hung in the air, static and motionless. Makoto extended a hand and pulled them wholesale from the window-frame, careful to ensure they kept their shape, and stepped through the empty frame onto the roof beyond before pulling the pieces of window back into place and healing the fractures between them with only a few moments of focus. No use losing the deposit now.

The female whitecoat spotted him, and shouted for help.

To the sky, then, he thought grimly, and launched himself from the roof and into the sky with an effortless ease.

It had been so long since he had truly, properly, flown.

And like Prim had on that fateful day, he set out for the sun. The city spilled out before him, ant-like, tiny cars and tinier people crawling along the string-sized roads, even the skyscrapers far from his reach despite their aspirations for the stars. Such a strangely beautiful word, Makoto had the time to muse, skyscraper, how evocative, and yet truly he thought he and his siblings were the only ones permitted to claim that title as their own. Scrape the sky he did, and angled west, and soon had left the glassy glint of the city behind for wide rolling green hills and the sheen of water beneath him. The wilderness gave way to village and then to open fields and then again to another little town set into the side of a hill, and then with the wind growing chill Makoto angled himself towards the horizon and descended, towards the plateau peak of Mount Fuji, knowing that it was unlikely to encounter any climbers in this climate.

He alighted by the _torii_ near the top of the most popular climbing route, a set of vermillion-and-charcoal gates which marked the entrances to shrines in Japan, and leaned against them for a moment to catch his breath, acutely aware of how little flying he had accomplished in the past few months. "You've got soft, Makoto," he muttered to himself, kicking at a stone and watching it bounce peacably down the slope, picking up speed as it flew down the mountain. "More fool you."

He cast about for a reflective surface and, finding none, sighed and slid down to sit at the foot of the _torii_. The clouds were coming in densely around him, but even through their attempt to obscure the sky Makoto could clearly perceive a shape moving through the sky towards him. He tensed his hands as though for a fight, his options flying through his mind - the shape clearly had bird wings, which meant it had to be one of his escaped siblings, but who was to say they been hadn't captured and inculcated once again with the poisonous dogma of Eden? Or had Faulkner succeeded in recreating them, in forging new winged weapons without the hearts and minds and souls that had proven such a burden to Makoto and his siblings?

In any case, he didn't have long to wonder, because the silhouette belonged to a very fast flier indeed, and he broke through from the clouds in only a moment. The man that landed down-slope from Makoto didn't seem overtly aggressive, but that didn't prevent Makoto reaching for the piece of glass he had sewn into the hem of his jacket for just this sort of situation. He sharpened it with a stroke of his nail, and stood, looking down at the stranger who had landed.

The man was tall and broad and dark-haired, with a wingspan that positively dwarfed the rest of him. He held his hands up in the universal symbol of surrender, but growing up with his siblings meant that Makoto knew better than to think the absence of a weapon meant they couldn't hurt him. The man, for his part, seemed mildly amused at the obvious conflict and confusion in Makoto's stance.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you didn't want to see me, Crow."

Makoto stared. "King?"

"The one, the only." If Prim had transformed into a more healthy version of herself, but still recognizably _herself_, then the same could not quite be said for King - the final years of puberty had clearly taken hold of him, made him taller and broader than his lean older brother. His feathery hair had clearly been self-styled, and he had a scar stretching from the corner of his lips down to the side of his throat, as though crafted by some sort of hook. If it wasn't for his eyes - those piercing blue-gray eyes, contributed by the same genes that had granted him wings and enhanced by the experimentation to which he had been subjected - Makoto thought darkly that he could have walked past King on the street and not recognised him at all. "Took quite a bit of looking to find you."

Makoto paused, still unwilling to relax his tense stance. "The feather?"

"The what?" King cocked his head and frowned.

"...nevermind." Makoto took a few, hesitant steps towards his brother. "And how _did_ you find me?"

"Wouldn't believe me if I told you, I think." King's lips twitched. "I dreamed it."

"You _dreamed_ about me?" Makoto paused, and couldn't resist a slight half-smile from crossing his face. "Your powers..."

King carefully avoided answering the second part. "Not exactly. Dreamed you were in... the general area, I guess? I've been keeping tabs on Eden forces and when they headed this way, I figured I might catch you in your escape."

"Cold and strategic as ever, King."

Was he imagining it, or did something akin to and yet more than grief flit across his brother's face at those words?

"I do try." King took a few more steps up the slope and shrugged. "I can't say I'm not surprised it worked."

They were playing an odd game of chicken, each taking a few steps nearer the other with the slightest indication that their trust would not be misplaced.

"Well, I'll take it as an insult to my skills that it did." Makoto's jaw tightened. "And the others?"

A conflicted expression flit across King's face. "I've heard... chatter. Mary's still alive. So is Rhee, hidden in a cave somewhere. The others..." He didn't need to say that he wasn't sure.

Makoto couldn't help himself. "You mean you didn't _dream _the answer?"

"Like I said." King shrugged. "It's a little more complicated than that."

He came level with Makoto, and in his eyes Makoto could see so many of the same emotions that were warring in Makoto's own mind - uncertainty about whether the other could be trusted, an odd unwillingness to believe that this was actually happening rather than some dreamed-of delusion, elation that they were alive and free with the hope that the others, too, were just as alive and free somewhere in the world, the strange sadness of seeing someone you once knew better than your own self permanently changed from who they had once been.

King cut through it all. "Aren't you going to give me a hug?"

"I was _never_ the hugging sort," Makoto reminded him, but couldn't resist taking the next few steps to clasp King's hand and draw him into an embrace.

Here, on the side of a volcano, their wings still dusted with strands of cloud and fine shards of glass, his younger brother's face pressed into his shoulder as though to stifle tears before they could arise, Makoto realised what this could mean - Mary was alive, Rhee was alive and out there, Prim was alive and happy, King was alive and _right here_, and he had to believe that Yves was surviving as well, and for the first time in four years Makoto wondered whether they could find their way back together to live some sort of quiet life caught halfway between sky and soil.

* * *

**The Flock:  
**Prim, created by Pixelfun20  
Crow, created by gamergirl101  
Yves, created by arrosaarmiarma  
King, created by AyOK  
Mary, created by chiaki ebooks  
Rhee, created by So hard to choose usernames

* * *

**Other key characters:  
**Orion Winchester (created by blueburns)  
Remiel (created by Deadly Animals Are Cute)  
Mira Argento (created by ShadowWolf223)  
Rosalia Conti (created by POMForever)


End file.
